Archive for March, 2011

As Patch 1.1 approaches, we sit down with Adam Hetenyi from the Rift Dungeons and Raids team to talk about the release of their new Raid instance: River of Souls, and get some questions answered about it and the current state of endgame dungeons and raids.

The tricky 2nd album (article), will be a hit or miss, let’s find out.

The long drawn out issue as I see it

When Scott Hartsman brought up the issue of a Dungeon Finder it sent a shiver up my spine, and I think every gamer in the world playing Rift took a sharp intake of breathe that, if there is life in outer space, they would have all heard it.

The Dungeon Finder in “the Game that shall not be mentioned” or “the Scottish Game” (everyone apart from actors and Englishmen are scratching their heads right now) could be said to have basically broken the game. Its cross-realm implementation meant that the already rude and obnoxious players could be even more so to one another and not have to worry about the consequences as they would never see those players again.

Like many others, I experienced it first hand and it’s one of the main reasons I left the game. In spite of my initial fear and concern, let’s all take a deep breath (again) and hopefully you’ll hear me out.

(Note: This is a totally opinionated article. These are in no way the facts or standards of the whole Bard community. This article was also written when I was in the 30’s and shouldn’t be taken too seriously. This is also my first serious blog post and you can obviously see that.)

I have been playing Rift a couple of weeks. My main was a warrior, but I have since changed primarily to a rogue. I primarily play a melee-focused build now, but spent my early days and the majority of my time using and abusing the Bard specialization. And this article is my opinion on why Bards are the support specialists, but cannot save a life.

Bards are definitely my favorite class. Whenever I run into people skeptical about picking up the Bard soul I just promise them that if they aren’t satisfied with the Bard soul, I will refund them the amount of money they spent to get their new role. So far, I haven’t had to dish out any money. It’s definitely an interesting class and Bards are very nice for soloing and grouping early on in the game.

We’d like to introduce our third and final new writer to The Rift! Derangedtaco enjoys playing FPS and MMO games, watching anime, and furthering his knowledge of the web. You can also finding him twittering away at @Derangedtaco! Go ahead and let him know what you think in the comments, and don’t forget to check out the rest under the cut!

This week has been a quite a frantic one in RIFT, but our troubles have finally started to lessen. With Trion’s introduction of Coin Lock, we can breathe — but not necessarily easily.

First of all, it’s important to note that Coin Lock doesn’t prevent unauthorized access to your account. Even with it in place, Trion is still asking us to watch out for the security of our accounts: should you mysteriously receive a Coin Lock email for no apparent reason, don’t forget to let Trion know that you’re having security issues!

In a way, Coin Lock is like a burglar alarm. You might have a little notice on your window saying that an alarm will sound if someone breaks in, but it doesn’t actually keep anyone from breaking in — they can, and will still try, to break in — but at least you’ll be able to know when they do.

As long as we are careful, Coin Lock can be a great tool in keeping your account more secure. When logging in from a unknown location, your hacker will discover that he can’t do much — except spam chat and level you. While the chat spam wouldn’t do much other than making all your friends hate you and having half the shard ignore you, the leveling might actually help you out in the long run!

We’d like to introduce our second new writer to The Rift! Arianne is new to Rift and decided to play Rift after being surrounded by a bright shiny light a few times! Leveled Up! Go ahead and let her know what you think in the comments! If you’re interested in helping out, send an email to riftpodcast@gmail.com!

Is it me or is the lack of a Guild Bank just not as important as it should be to Trion and some of its players?

Sure we have been blessed, spoilt… whatever by the feature heavy “Grand Daddy of MMO’s”, but what is that supposed to mean? That we can’t complain when another MMO leaves the feature out because some people don’t see it as a big issue?

We’d like to introduce the first of a number of new writers to The Rift! Raziel317 has been posting on his blog over at An Attempt at being Interesting and you should start to see some more posts from him over here! Go ahead and let him know what you think in the comments! If you’re interested in helping out, send an email to riftpodcast@gmail.com! Be sure to check out the rest below the cut!

For our last Episode Scott Hartsman and Cindy ‘Abigale’ Bowens join us to talk a bit about the game from back when no one knew about it, through to today. We also reminisce about the podcast origins and touch on some pertinent subjects for the future of the game:

The path of Rift and the Podcast

Guild Banks

Server Transfers coming soon

Dungeon Finder tweaking

Not necessarily the end, just a goodbye

Haha Rapture

We’d like to thank everyone for all their support. Each and Every person at Trion who helped us make this podcast, every fan who ever was and whoever downloaded and listened. Thank you for being a part of this journey.

Thank you to Typefrag.com for their sponsorship – if you want a quality ventrilo server, look no further. These guys are great.

Thank you to Doghouse Systems for their support – they have amazing systems – head over and take a look.